The Confessions of Catherine de Medici Quotes

“The truth is, not one of is innocent. We all have sins to confess.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“Love is a treacherous emotion. You will fare better without it. We Medici always have.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“The truth is, not one of us is innocent. We all have sins to confess.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“You'll fare beer without love. We Medici always do." As soon as I spoke, I regretted it. I'd remembered Papa Clement's phrase exactly, used it to the same horrid purpose. I saw her flinch, take a small step back. I wanted to console her, to somehow ease the harsh reality of what I'd said. But I could not. I would not lie to her nor pretend the task I set before her was anything other than what it was: an act of submission, which could entail the loss of her youthful dreams.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“There are many ways to obtain our desires, ma petite. Remember that, for it will serve you well.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“I was fifty-seven years old. I had contended with death all my life, burying a husband and four children, killing a lover and countless foes, but this small loss undid me. If death had come for me that day, I would have welcomed it.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“I felt it build inside me—an eruption of exhaustion, anxiety, and relief so overwhelming that when he reached our pew and sat beside Margot, who turned bitter eyes to me, I threw back my head and laughed aloud. I was still a Medici and I would survive.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“He informed me that Huguenots throughout France were bolting across our borders into Geneva. There, I’d been branded as Queen Jezebel. Printed pamphlets declaimed every vile rumor told of me: I was the Italian serpent, a monstrous being who’d schemed with Spain to exterminate their faith. When once I might have been outraged, quick to protest my innocence, I told Birago to do nothing. Let all the calumny fall upon me, if it would absolve my sons.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“He had betrayed my trust and gone to war against me, and now he committed the ultimate offense: he defamed my flesh and blood. This time, I would have vengeance.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“To be a woman alone in this world requires every weapon you possess, every last bit of strength and endurance. You cut away pieces of yourself without realizing it, until you have everything and nothing at the same time.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“Nie rozumiesz, bo nie wiesz jak wielka jest niszcząca moc władzy. Nadal wierzysz, że można wszystko rozwiązać dzięki logice, że ludzie posłuchają głosu rozsądku, bo przecież w gruncie rzeczy w obliczu Boga wszyscy jesteśmy równi.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“Czy zawsze musisz zobaczyć, żeby uwierzyć?”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“No truth can be determined that concerns the future.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“But we are each created in God's image and must be allowed to seek our path to Him in our own way.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“when overhearing criticism of his late mother-in-law, it was Henri IV who retorted, “I ask you, what could the woman do, left by the death of her husband with five little children and two families who thought only of grasping the Crown—our own [the Bourbons] and the Guises? I am surprised she didn’t do worse.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“And I ask myself, What epitaph will history inscribe for me?”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“Have I not struggled as much as any other for my blood? Others live fewer years; accomplish a mere fraction of what I have; and yet they sit enthroned with halos about their brows, while I sink like a villain in my own calumny.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“I have never placed much belief in infidel credos nor even in my own church’s promise of an everlasting life. I’ve witnessed too much treachery in the name of religion.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“But no truth can be certain that concerns the future, I thought, and I pressed a hand to my mouth, stifling an acid burst of laughter. Fate, it seemed, was the cruelest trickster of all.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“You will save France from destruction; but the bloodline you fight with every breath to save, the barren seed that is your family—they are damned.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“I knew then that something in me had died with him and I would never be the same. There was nothing left of the girl I’d been, nothing of the naïve adolescent who’d first come to France.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“I kept waiting for grief to overwhelm me, for a pain so visceral it would thrust home the enormity of my guilt. I feared my heart had turned to stone, calcified by strife and betrayal until I could no longer feel a thing.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“In seeking to kill one man, I was about to bring about the deaths of thousands.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“What day is tomorrow?” I asked, as they disappeared into the lengthening shadows. “Sunday the twenty-fifth,” said Birago. “The Eve of St. Bartholomew, patron of healers.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“It was him or me. It had always been him or me.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“As his smile knifed through me, I suddenly understood. It all came into monstrous focus. He wanted to die. He wanted to perish for his faith, for then he’d wield greater power than he ever had alive. He too had learned his lesson from the murder of le Balafré. He had seen the devotion martyrs could engender.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“You’ll fare better without love. We Medici always do.” As soon as I spoke, I regretted it. I’d remembered Papa Clement’s phrase exactly, used it to the same horrid purpose. I saw her flinch, take a small step back.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“to me she was still my child, whom I must sacrifice for the good of the realm. But few of us marry for love; as royal women, we must fulfill our duty and Margot was more fortunate than most, for she wasn’t being sent to a foreign court.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“but I felt the weight of the years as I never had before, every link with my past severed so that I seemed to stand alone, with a surfeit of memories no one else shared.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

“I could not afford sentiment; I had no time for it. I had a realm to protect.”
― C.W. Gortner, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici